


Please Please Me

by Delilah_Joy



Category: Mad Men
Genre: 1960s, Coming Out, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delilah_Joy/pseuds/Delilah_Joy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months after the ending of Season 3, Peggy and Sal run into each other at a party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Please Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



 **Please Please Me**

 

Kurt and Smitty live on the fourth floor, but Peggy can hear the noise of the party by the time she’s reached the second story landing.  She’s nervous; parties always make her nervous, but tonight she really doesn’t know what she’s doing here, and for a moment she thinks about turning around and making her excuses later.  But that’s silly and it’s childish.  She pushes on up the stairs.

 

She’d been surprised to get the call from Kurt, inviting her to come.  They were always friendly, but she was friendly with a lot of people at Sterling Cooper who she now suspects would cross the street to avoid saying hello to her.  Not that it bothers her, particularly.  The new agency is still undergoing birth pangs, and it’s anybody’s guess whether they’ll actually make it.  But it’s theirs, and there’s something thrilling about that.

 

In any case, Kurt told her there wouldn’t be a lot of Sterling Cooper people here.  “It’s mostly our artist friends,” he said, which makes her wonder why she’s on the guest list at all.

 

When she reaches the fourth floor, she sees that the door of their apartment is open, and the party has spilled out into the hall.  No one she knows; more men than women, she notices, although she knows she’s not on firm ground here, in terms of romantic possibilities.  Kurt’s friends...well, it makes sense that some of them will be like Kurt himself.

 

She presses on into the apartment, shrugging off her coat and folding it over her forearm.  It’s hot in here; if her mother were here, she’d be predicting pneumonia for any guest who worked up a sweat and walked back out into the freezing February night.  The room is crowded, and she can smell marijuana.  She straightens herself up, walks purposefully through the bodies.  She’s not going to look like a lost little girl.

 

She catches sight of Kurt, who smiles like he’s actually glad to see her.  “Coats in there,” he shouts, pointing, before turning back to the wine glass he’s in the process of filling.

 

She leaves her coat on the bed and finds her way to the bar, pours herself a scotch.  She looks over the hors d’oeuvres, which are intriguingly European and don’t appeal to her in the least: little bowls of smoked fish, bread so dark it’s almost black, some kind of cheese with brown flecks scattered throughout.  A pot of red jam with a spoon in it, for no reason she can discern.  There’s a man next to her, filling a plate, and he drops a dollop of the jam right onto the edge of his dish.  She’s about to ask him about it--it’s as good a conversation opener as any--when she hears, from somewhere nearby, a man’s voice, raised in falsetto:“_Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you_.”

 

The voice is familiar, but not, and she turns away from the buffet table to see Sal standing in a loose knot of men, finishing the brief performance with a flourish of his hand.  His friends laugh and mock-clap, and it’s as Sal pretends to bow that he sees Peggy and his cheerful expression drops away.

 

He doesn’t want to see her, though she’s not sure why.  But then the man standing closest to Sal drapes an arm around his shoulders and leans in to whisper something in his ear, and she thinks she has some idea.

 

She sends him a smile, and it only takes him a moment to gather himself enough to smile back. 

 

Then he’s across the room in an instant, putting his arms around her and kissing her on the cheek. 

 

“Peggy,” he says.  “Lovely to see you.”  His voice is sincere enough that she’d believe him if she hadn’t seen the way he looked a moment ago. 

 

“Good to see you too, Sal,” she says, and she means it.  He looks different somehow, taller almost, though she knows that can’t be it.  “I think you’re the only person here that I know.”

 

“Well, we’ll have to fix that,” he says.  “Just let me refill my drink.”

 

She follows him to the bar and watches as he picks up the tongs next to the ice bucket.  “How have you been?” she asks.  “I’ve been thinking about you.  It was so sudden when you...left.  I don’t think I even said goodbye.”

 

Sal pauses with an ice cube in mid-air, then drops it into his glass with a clink.  “Worst day of my life,” he says.  “But I’m better now.”

 

She nods and looks down, not sure what to say. 

 

Sal lifts a decanter, fills his glass with golden liquid.  When he turns back to her, his expression is serious.  “I should tell you I’ve...well, Kitty and I have separated.”

 

“Oh, Sal, I’m so sorry,” she says.  She sets her own glass down, pours another inch of scotch.  “That must be terrible.  Are you going to get...”  She shakes her head.  “I shouldn’t ask.”

 

He smiles sadly.  “Not a divorce,” he says.  They step away to let another guest get a drink.  “We’d like an annulment, though we’re not sure...well, it’s a difficult process.  We have to go before the tribunal of the diocese and prove impediment...”  He trails off, shaking his head.

 

Peggy nods.  “They don’t make it easy,” she says.  She thinks about what little she knows about annulment and the church’s byzantine set of rules.  The trick, as far as she can see, is to find the right set of grounds, to locate your marriage in the correct category.  “Have you thought of...well, I wonder if you might be able to make a case for deception.”  He looks dismayed at the word, and she hurries on.  “It’s called that, but it just...it has to do with withholding information.  Like a sin of omission.  If one party kept a secret, something that would have stopped the other party from consenting to the marriage, if she’d known.  Or if he’d known.”

 

She’s afraid she’s said too much, but Sal gives her a gentle smile.  “I suppose that wouldn’t be an inaccurate description,” he says.  Then he shakes it off, whatever he’s been feeling while they’ve been talking.  “Come on,” he says.  “I’ll introduce you to my friends.”

 

***

 

Sal takes a breath to steel himself, then he takes Peggy’s arm and leads her over to the corner where Jim is standing with Mark and Terry.  They’re still talking about the Beatles, though they’ve moved on to the details of the band’s upcoming visit.  Terry has a friend who works at the Plaza, and he’s saying something about the hotel hiring off-duty police officers for the length of their stay.  Jim laughs and says, “Why?  Are they afraid the Beatles are going to steal the towels?”

 

Sal introduces Peggy, then stands back to sip his drink and let the conversation take shape around him.  He’d known Peggy might be here, known that a few select Sterling Cooper people had been invited, but actually seeing her had been a shock.  Before she caught his eye, he’d been feeling amazed by the evening, amazed to think that this was a party where he could arrive with a man and stand beside him all night long, leaning close and finishing each other’s sentences like a couple might do.  That when the party was over, he would leave with this man, and anyone watching would know they were going home together to spend the night in the same bed.  Would know and would watch them go without a single word of disapproval.

 

To see Peggy, then, is a reminder that the world is large and unpredictable, and that he can’t afford to let his guard down, even in a roomful of friends. 

 

It’s not something he’s had to remind himself before; being careful, keeping his passions under tight reign, has always been second nature to him.  But now he feels transparent, like anyone looking at him can see the rhythm of his heart beating beneath his skin.  He remembers his friends after high school, rushing to find a girl and fall in love before they had to ship off to Europe or Japan.  Frantic for the hurried courtship, the girl walking down the aisle in a borrowed dress, the night or even two together before he had to leave.  And Sal had felt...honestly, he’d felt that he was above the rest of them, that he was meant to exist on a different plane.  He would become a priest or an artist--and strange how those two paths seemed equally desirable to him, equally noble--and his life would transcend the ordinariness these other boys seemed to crave.  He had no idea how little it would take to bring him down to that level of body and breath, desire and need.  To show him that he was, in some way he hadn’t understood, a man like any other.

 

He wasn’t being overly dramatic when he told Peggy that the day Don Draper fired him was the worst day of his life, but that wasn’t the whole story.  It was shattering, a crisis that tipped the world for him.  But here on the other side, or close to it, he couldn’t bring himself to wish it had gone any other way. 

 

That first day, wandering the city in a daze, he’d felt panicked and blank.  He had no destination, no goal except to fill the hours until Kitty expected him home.  But he wasn’t surprised when his “random” path took him into Central Park and then when it led him to the Lake and the woods beyond, where he’d heard--and he couldn’t pretend anymore that he hadn’t kept that piece of information close, protected it in a secret little box--where he’d heard men sometimes went to meet.

 

It was early September, baking hot, but the path into the woods was dusky and shaded.  As he walked into the copse of sycamore and oak, broken sunlight dappling the grass, and imagined what he might find ahead of him, he’d thought...well, it was blasphemy, but that was hardly his biggest transgression at this point.  He’d thought of Eden.

 

In the three weeks between that afternoon and the day when Kitty tried to call him at work and learned he was no longer employed by Sterling Cooper, Sal’s life split into two separate pieces.  Days of hushed revelation, spreading newspaper on the ground so his pants wouldn’t get stained when he knelt in the dirt.  Nights at home with Kitty, trying to remember what it meant to act normal.  In those three weeks, the leaves changed color above his head.  By the time it was over, they bore little resemblance to what they had been when it all began.

 

The night it came to an end, he knew something was wrong as soon as he opened the apartment door.  There were no warm smells of dinner cooking, no radio playing while Kitty set the table.  He found her in their room, lying on top of the bedclothes.  She was pale, and he could tell she’d been crying, though she wasn’t anymore.

 

“It’s not another woman, is it?” she asked dully. 

 

“No,” he said.  He couldn’t tell if that would have been better or worse.

 

Sal sees that the conversation has moved on, and Peggy looks like she’s not sure whether or not she’s a part of it.  He reaches out and touches her shoulder to get her attention.

 

“I hear there’s been a bit of a shake-up,” he says.

 

She flushes, though whether she’s happy or embarrassed, he can’t tell.  “You heard.”

 

He nods.  “It’s big news.  Congratulations on being part of the inner circle.”

 

Peggy shrugs and ducks her head.  “Congratulations or condolences, depending,” she says.  But she’s smiling, and he can tell that she’s proud.

 

Sal hasn’t known many girls like Peggy.  He can’t picture her married with a houseful of babies, turning that intense focus to laundry stains and bologna sandwiches.  When they were working together, he realizes now, he kept his distance from her, without really meaning to.  As any third-grade misfit knows, if you want to blend in, you don’t ally yourself with the other odd ducks.

 

The record that’s been playing ends, the needle skidding along the innermost groove.  Smitty weaves through the room, lifts the black disc and slides it back into its sleeve.  Then he turns and claps his hands to get the room’s attention, a wide smile on his face.

 

“Okay, teenyboppers,” he yells, holding up a new album.  “I hope someone brought smelling salts.”

 

He sets the record on the turntable.  A moment of static, and then the room is filled with the song they’ve all been hearing everywhere.

 

_Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you something_

_I think you’ll understand_

_When I say that something_

_I want to hold your hand..._

 

There’s scattered laughter and mugging, feigned hysteria.  Earlier tonight, on the news, there’d been footage of the Beatles arriving at Heathrow Airport after a trip to Sweden.  Thousands of teenage girls stood in the rain, screaming and sobbing, in the thrall of some kind of zeal that was almost religious in its intensity.  They _wanted_, these girls, they _yearned_.  “I’m not sure,” Jim had said dryly, “that holding hands is exactly what they’re thinking about.”

 

For weeks, people have been talking about this like it’s a plague.  It’s spreading, it’s about to arrive _here_: this overflow of emotion, this mass delirium.  Everyone is poised, bracing themselves, from the ministers shouting about the boys’ long hair to the girls begging to sleep outside in the Carnegie Hall ticket line.  They know something is going to happen.  They’re ready.

 

_And when I touch you, I feel happy inside_

_It’s such a feeling that my love I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide_

 

Some people have been singing along right from the beginning, and now the walls shake with the vibration of fifty voices raised together.  There’s some self-consciousness to it, some sense of camp, but it doesn’t diminish the song’s brightness, its unfettered joy.  When Sal feels Jim take his hand, it takes him a minute to squeeze back, to commit to the gesture.  He’s still not used to this; he has to relearn the rules every time.  But then he looks around and sees that all through the room, people are holding hands--friends, couples, long strings of people who arrived by themselves and may not see each other beyond tonight. 

 

He glances at Peggy.  She’s singing, too, but she’s looking toward the floor, and her smile is strained.  It’s so easy, he knows, to keep yourself separate, to make sure you’re always a half-step away from everyone else.  To think that that’s the way it has to be.

 

The song builds and builds.  He reaches over and takes her hand.

 

 

 

 


End file.
